This invention relates to a sample inspection system including a plurality of analyzers connected to a conveyor line and an operating method for a management server of the system. More particularly, the invention relates to a sample inspection system that can be applied to a pre-processor for conducting centrifugal separation and pipetting for samples before the start of inspection and to an analyzer for analyzing the components of the sample after the pre-processing is completed and an operating method for a management server of the system.
A sample inspection system including a pre-processor and an analyzer has been introduced in recent years into an inspection room of a hospital to speed up an inspection processing and to quickly report the inspection result to doctors. Urgency requirement levels of the inspection are different among patients such as periodical inspection of hospital patients, inspection of out-patients and inspection of patients under operation and this system makes it possible to quickly report the inspection results of the samples having different requirement levels by assigning priorities corresponding to the requirement levels to the patients. For example, the pre-processor described above satisfies the requirement by preferentially sending out those samples having higher priorities. The technology described in JP-A-11-281652 updates the priority of samples allocated in advance to the pre-processor when it is desired to speed up the pre-processing of a specific sample.
According to the prior art, a display device of a control management portion has a monitor window for the position of a sample and its priority and a priority inputting window and can grasp in which stage of the system a sample having a sample ID and a priority as a pair exists and can easily change and correct the priority. In particular, in the prior art, an operator of the system can easily decide or correct the priority by retrieving a sample having a higher priority than the priority of a sample requiring urgent inspection after confirming the content of the former.
When a large number of samples having high urgency levels are charged, the problem develops quite naturally in that delay of samples having lower priorities becomes great. The prior art technology described above teaches an operating method for increasing the priority of samples with the lapse of time to prevent corrosion of the samples when racks stay for a long time but a sample inspection system has been desired in which the operator can grasp the influences on other samples and can then decide the sample having urgency when deciding the urgent samples.